Improving requirements and sustainability in land allocation processes

The project aims to create better conditions for sustainable requirements in the land allocation process and thus provide concrete tools for, among other things, a sustainable and equitably designed living environment and sustainable material and resource flows.

Many officials struggle with a lack of guidance in land allocation competitions, which makes it difficult to achieve sustainability goals and attract developers to weak housing markets. There are no common standards, the work is manual, and each municipality has its own processes. Assessments and exchanges of experience are not shared between municipalities, leading to costs and difficulties in understanding municipalities' intentions due to a lack of common language.

It is estimated that the total cost of all unsuccessful proposals is 1-1.5 billion SEK/year. This is a huge amount of wasted effort for developers, which ultimately affects the product delivered once they get land, but also how much they can pay for municipal land. Ultimately, these wasted costs are borne by end users, tenants or home buyers, or through less innovative buildings.

In contrast to the purchase of goods and services, municipalities have considerable room for manoeuvre when allocating land. In land allocations, the municipality can negotiate early on about things that cannot be influenced to the same extent in the detailed planning process. These may include requirements for sustainable materials, maximum CO2 emissions, impact on biodiversity, and adaptation to human and societal values.

Less bureaucracy in land allocation through new standard

We believe that a clearer set of requirements in land allocations would streamline the process and increase the possibility of achieving the various sustainability goals and models that are ultimately relevant and provide clear criteria that can be evaluated and monitored. Therefore, the project will develop a new common Standard for Strategic Requirements Specification (SSRS) through an iterative workshop-based process with the project partners.

To ensure that the standard lives on after the end of the project, the second year of the project will be devoted to consolidating working methods that can ensure that it is kept up to date and administered in an open and transparent manner. A key element is to work with stakeholders to find the best way to do this. The project plan includes the following points:

• Identify the problems in a series of workshops with need owners and experts to jointly develop solutions.
• Test and validate the developed solutions in real land allocations and provide feedback to the working group.
• By summer 2024, develop a first version of the standard, launch it and monitor its autonomy after one year.
• Establish an organisational structure for the future management of the standard. Validate and continue to develop the standard and organisational structure for the remainder of the project.

Expected impacts

A common Standard for Strategic Requirements Setting could benefit municipalities and industry players in several ways. It can provide concrete support to municipal officials, facilitate digitalisation and follow-up, promote sustainability and climate change adaption, attract more actors, and create opportunities for new digital business models.

This can contribute to a more efficient and sustainable urban development process that benefits everyone. It will be less time-consuming and costly for developers to participate in land allocation processes, allowing them to devote more energy to the unique conditions of each site and focus on increasing the quality of each individual project.